Apple cuts more than 200 staff from autonomous car project

Apple is restructuring its autonomous car project team.

Sources told CNBC that Apple dismissed over 200 staff from the team working on the autonomous car project. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the report and believed there is still opportunity in the space for the company.

"We have an incredibly talented team working on autonomous systems and associated technologies at Apple. As the team focuses their work on several key areas for 2019, some groups are being moved to projects in other parts of the company, where they will support machine learning and other initiatives, across all of Apple," the spokesperson said.

"We continue to believe there is a huge opportunity with autonomous systems, that Apple has unique capabilities to contribute, and that this is the most ambitious machine learning project ever.”

The autonomous car project team is currently led by Doug Field, who is previously a Telsa engineering vice president and Apple veteran. The team members reportedly include Jamie Waydo, a senior engineer of Alphabet’s Waymo self-driving vehicle team, and Chris Porritt who was the former Telsa vice president of vehicle engineering and former Aston Martin Chief Engineer.